The Endless Struggles of Having a Crush
by Cottonballpoofs
Summary: This is my first time putting anything online, comments and suggestions on things I can improve are welcome but please be nice. This is a random Jamzuli fic inspired by the ones by Frostylicious. Be sure to check those out, too. I hope you like it! I'll publish the next chapter whenever I get a chance. I'm still learning the site, so it might be a while.
1. Chapter 1

A lot of the shops on the boardwalk had mail delivered to their business instead of their homes. Jamie liked it; everywhere he needed to go was closer that way, save where Steven lived, but they usually didn't get anything. Today he decided to get to the boardwalk in the morning, before the tourists came and made everything harder. Plus, the earlier he got this done, the less time he would have to spend tiredly trudging through the streets in the hot afternoon.

Life was a lot easier without a crush on anybody; he had talked himself out of liking Garnet a while ago. He definitely did not expect anything that would bring that struggle back.

Steven was skipping, rushing ahead, pulling somebody behind him. Jamie heard him say, "Oh man, I have to show you the arcade- you're gonna love it!" with his usual enthusiasm. "They have all these games..." A moment of silence. "Oh, don't worry, on earth we don't power things with gems, just wires and electricity. It's fine."Steven was adorable sometimes.

"Oh hi Stev-" he paused a moment, and his next breath was a bit shaky, "en..." Calm down, he told himself. Someone was standing next to Steven. Her short, carefree hair blew around in the wind. The sundress she wore was several different tones of blue, and it matched the lighter shade that covered her skin. Jamie didn't even question this; lots of weird things happened around here. You get used to it after a while.

Steven unknowingly saved Jamie from an award silence by saying, "Hi Jamie! Do you need any help later today?"

"No," Jamie said. It came out sounding a bit mean. However, Steven wasn't offended at all.

"Okay. He turned to the girl next to him. Lapis, this is Jamie. He delivers the mail to everybody, but he's a really good actor and play director too!"

"Um, hello," she said shyly. Her voice was sweet and melodic. Jamie melted. He opened his mouth to reply, but he didn't know what to say. Even if he had, he doubted he would have been able to say it. The wind ruffled her hair again, and the search for words became a bit more frantic, a bit more distracted. Steven, unaware of his dilemma, continued on,

"Jamie, meet my beach-summer-fun-buddy Lapis Lazuli! I'm showing her around. Do you want to come with us?" Yes, you do. Jamie thought, _say yes. It's not hard._

"No, I have a lot of mail to deliver. Sorry, Steven." _Why did I say that?_ He scolded himself silently, then sighed. Life just wanted to keep throwing these things at him, didn't it?


	2. Chapter 2

Jamie unlocked his apartment, put his bag down by the door, walked through the kitchen, flopped down on his bed and proceeded to stare at the ceiling. Lapis Lazuli. That was her name. He wondered if he would ever get a chance to talk to her again. He distracted himself from these thoughts by sitting down at his desk and working on a script he had started a while ago. He planned to send it in to a few theater schools, as well as some competitions. After all, he did need some extra money, and it might get him noticed. He must have scratched out and re-written thousands of words by the time he decided to eat dinner.

He didn't feel like cooking, so he grabbed a bag of chicken nuggets from the freezer. If seven years of grade school soccer had taught him anything, it was that he should always keep some microwavable food around. It was quiet, so he plugged his phone into the TV speaker to play music. That was one of the things about living in a small town – you don't hear the cars passing by at night.

He had the weirdest dream that night. Steven was there, and he was asking if Jamie could see him or not. When Jamie replied, Steven did a brief victory dance before saying something about checking to make sure Pearl wasn't watching him. Dreams are weird, he thought as his alarm clock buzzed with loud, harsh beeps. Dreams did provide him with lots of good ideas, though, so he wasn't complaining. He wasn't working today, so he was free to do whatever he wanted. Which, today, included watching an all-new episode of Under the Knife. He had gone through the trouble of avoiding all the online leaks, and he was not going to have that effort go to waste. Just then, his phone rang. He somehow managed to find it before it went to voicemail, which didn't happen very often. "Hello?" he questioned.

"Hi Jamie, it's Steven! Connie and I were going to watch the new episode of Under the Knife at my house. Do you want to come?" Jamie thought for a moment. It was pretty much impossible to be in a bad mood around Steven, and Connie would inform him when they made fun of the more obscure elements of a hospital.

"Sure," he said. It couldn't hurt. On second thought, the chances of getting hurt did seem to be higher around there. Whatever.

Please tell me if formatting is messed up, I'm trying to see if it will work on mobile.


	3. Chapter 3

He ended up getting there a little early, but it was no big deal. Steven was in the middle of trying to persuade his giant pink pet to not dig up the beach. Jamie's best guess was that it was some sort of big cat, like tigers and lions. _And bears, oh my,_ he thought to himself, amused. One of Steven's caretakers poked her head out the window. "Yo Ste-man, I'm gonna eat this popcorn, okay?"

Steven ran towards his house, frantically shouting, "No, Amethyst, that's for us to eat while we watch!" As soon as he was inside the house, his pet proceeded to stop digging and lie on the ground. _Definitely a cat,_ Jamie thought. Cats were like that.

It felt a little awkward standing there doing nothing, so he reached for his phone and mindlessly played a few games of Temple Run. He was terrible at it, but it was something to do. When he eventually gave up, he saw Connie walking down the beach. He waved to her.

"So what's up?" she questioned. She sounded serious, almost like she was trying to get information out of him.

He could put up with that. "The sky."

"Haha, very funny," she replied sarcastically. "I'll spell it out for you. Why were you avoiding Steven yesterday?

Jamie was officially confused. "What?"

"He told me he saw you yesterday, and I noticed a loophole in your story." This statement only served to further puzzle him. This must have shown, because the next thing she said was, "Look, you said you didn't need any help,"

"Yea…"

"and then you left because you had a lot of work to do. See where I'm going here?"

Thankfully, Steven once again spared Jamie. "Guys, it's about to start, come on!"

Connie ran in; Jamie walked. In school he used to joke that if he was running, his life was probably in danger. The intro sequence started, and Connie squealed with excitement.

Jamie jumped when the room was suddenly filled with light. As the light ceased, it left behind the girl from the other day. Steven piped up, "Hi Lapis!" A pause. "Wait, why aren't you at the barn?"

She sighed. "I think I might break something if I have to be around Peridot for more than a day at a time." Seeing that Steven was somewhat disappointed by this, she changed the topic. "What are you watching?"

Steven talked as fast as he could in order not to miss anything. Jamie didn't really hear what he was saying until the end of his explanation, though. "This is a new episode. Do you want to watch with us?"

Jamie only half heard her response, but she was casually walking over to them. He managed to turn his attention back to the TV for a moment, but then she sat down. _She's sitting next to me_ , he thought. _She is sitting. Next to me._ The episode eventually ended – they were only twenty minutes each, after all. Steven jumped up, saying, "Oh, I forgot to bring the popcorn! I guess I'll go get it now."

There were a few seconds of silence before Lapis, her head cocked to the side observantly, commented, "I didn't know humans could be as tall as you are." Jamie laughed nervously. She was just so _adorable_.

Connie didn't hesitate to provide her with information. "Yeah, we grow as we get older." She was looking at Lapis suspiciously, as if she could jump up and attack them at any moment.

They turned at the sound of running footsteps. "Guys, I got the popcorn!" Steven announced. He was holding a bowl full of caramel corn covered in chocolate syrup and melted marshmellow. Connie eagerly scooped some onto a napkin.

"Uh, no thanks," Jamie and Lapis said in unison. This time it was Lapis' turn to laugh. Her smile sent a small shiver down his spine as he automatically returned it.

"I guess I'll go now," she said as she stood up. "Bye, Steven." She waved, and left with the same flash that brought her.


	4. Chapter 4

Lapis flew up onto the silo. It was a lot more peaceful up there than it was in the barn, and she liked how the wind felt when it blew past her in gentle gusts. She had taken the time to break the ladder – none of the others understood wanting to be left alone. They would come up and ask her what was wrong, even when she was completely fine. It was annoying. Just because she wasn't talking didn't mean anything was wrong.

Living on Earth was also a bit frustrating. Humans were confusing, and, though she would never admit it, she wanted to learn more about the society they had constructed. By the looks of it, they had come pretty far. The trouble was that they couldn't understand much about gems. Even the concept of one of their young learning to fight was questionable to them. Steven meant well, but he could be a bit overbearing, and his friend – Connie? – hated her. Not that Lapis cared.

The human that had been with Steven and Connie, though, was different. He acted differently. Lapis didn't know much about humans, but it seemed as if their behavior depended somewhat on their age. That was something she could understand – it was very similar to gems.

She was a rare gem, back on Homeworld. Not special enough to own a pearl or anything, but still valuable to Blue Diamond. She was a reporter. She was allowed and expected to go to events and things. By that time, plays and drama were more of an old tradition than anything else, but, unlike most others, Lapis enjoyed them. When she was waiting at the galaxy warp all those years, sometimes she would watch them from memory. She knew every last line, every last movement the actors made.

Now she revisited one again, remembering how her home was when it still felt like one.


	5. Chapter 5

The next day Jamie had another encounter with Steven on the boardwalk. Steven kept smiling and giggling as if he was about to pull some bizarre prank. "Hey Jamie."

"What's up, Steven?"

"Can you help Connie and I design a tree house? We've tried a few different things, but so far all of them have fallen down.

"I don't know, I don't have a lot of time today," Jamie tried. Steven countered with puppy eyes.

"Please?"

Jamie lasted roughly ten seconds before saying, "Fine, I'll help." Steven ran off with an exited yelp.

So now he was in the middle of a field, staring at a tree. There was a broken-down barn in the distance. A good chunk of the wall was missing, so he could see that there were pieces of scrap metal and various broken objects strewn over one side. The other side of the wall was colorful, but he couldn't tell what was painted there, if anything was at all. Connie was focused intently on a piece of paper. After a while she stood up. "Okay, I think I have something, but we're going to need more wood. She turned to Steven. "Do you think there is any in the barn?"

"Oh, definitely," Steven replied. "Come on Jamie, let's go!"

There _was_ a painting in the barn. It showed elegant buildings, and it was incredibly detailed, though the left side wasn't finished. There was a star chart on the ceiling, or what was left of it. Everything on it was labeled in a language he didn't recognize. "Wow," Connie gasped.

Before Jamie could tell what was happening, everything was wet. He was still blinking the water out of his eyes as he heard someone talk to Steven. "Oh, sorry, Steven, I didn't see who it was."

He could see again by the time Steven responded, "That's fine. It's not like you can see through walls or anything." Jamie noticed Lapis in the pause that followed. Steven abruptly inserted, "Wait, can you see through walls?"

Lapis smiled and laughed. She was beautiful. "No, I can't. Why are you guys here?"

"We're building a tree house, it's gonna be awesome!" Steven responded. "Can we use some of the boards in here?"

Lapis shrugged, saying, "Sure, I don't care. Go ahead."

Steven ran out of the barn, shouting, "Lion! Lion, come over here, you need to help us move these!" Connie followed him.

Lapis was the first one to speak. She cocked her head to the side and said, "It's Jamie, right?"

"Y-yeah," he answered slowly, then continued, "Did you paint those? They would make a really good set. Where did you get the idea?" He was a bit surprised at how normal he managed to sound when he said that.

"Oh, um, it's where I used to live." A silence followed.

"Where is it? It, um, looks like a nice place." _There goes talking normally,_ he thought.

"It's on Homeworld," she rushed over those words, like she wanted to get them out of the way. "Well, at least that's the way it looked when I lived there. It's changed a lot since then..."

"What's Homeworld?" he asked.

She pointed up to the star map. "It's labeled." Jamie stared upward in silence. "Oh!" he looked back over to her as she shook her head, embarrassed. "I forgot, you can't read that. I can show you tonight if you want."

Jamie could feel himself blushing as he weakly answered, "Really?" He hoped she didn't notice how his voice wavered a bit.

She shrugged casually. "Yeah, it's not like I have anything else to do."


End file.
